Shutter mechanism for confessionals



Oct. 25, 1966 1-, KANE SHUTTER MECHANISM FOR CONFESSIONALS Filed Dec. 6, 1963 FIG.

FIG.2

FIG.3

United States Patent 3,280,505 SHUTTER MECHANISM FOR CONFESSIONALS Thomas A. Kane, 10103 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring, Md. Filed Dec. 6, 1963, Ser. No. 328,532 1 Claim. (Cl. 4938) This invention relates to a shutter mechanism for confessionals, and more particularly to a shutter mechanism for use in a confessional between a confessor and a penitent.

In accordance with Roman Catholic theology, Christ gave to His Apostles and the priests and bishops who have succeeded them the authority to absolve sin in His name when He said to them Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. (John 20:21-23) Further, the Catholic Church teaches that since the confessor must make a judgment, of forgiving or not forgiving the sins of a penitent, it is necessary that the penitent convey his sins to the confessor. There is much historical evidence that in the initial centuries of Christianity, penitents were required to make public confessions of their sins.

osures, it can be confession and penitent could seen that a penitent must complete his leave his inclosure before a succeeding enter the inclosure.

In more recent years, as Catholic larger, it has been common for Catholic Churches to third penitent enters that inclosure to wait for the priest second penitent.

In this manner, there when he was either covering or uncovering the screened opening between inclosures. Since priests must sometimes remain in confessionals for many hours, this constant opening and closing of doors through great distances becomes very tiring.

An object, therefore, of the present invention is to provide a new and improved shutter mechanism for confessionals.

Another object of the invention is to provide a new and improved shutter device for use in a confessional between the confessor and a penitent.

Still another object of the invention is to provide a new and improved shutter mechanism in a confessional which can be opened and closed with extremely short movements.

A shutter mechanism for confessionals of the type having a first area in which a confessor is located and a which match the the member is in a specific embodiment thereof, when read with the appended drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a fragmentary, perspective view of a confessional containing one embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 2 is a fragmentary side elevation of apparatus forming one embodiment of the invention and in which is incorporated the confessional of FIG. 1, and

FIG. 3 is a fragmentary, vertical section taken along line 3-3 of FIG. 2.

Referring now to FIG. 1, there is shown a confessional having three inclosures. The center inclosure of the three, designated generally by the numeral 10, is provided for the priest or confessor. Some sort of a seating arrangement 11 is provided, and a door 12 is furnished to seal off the priests inclosure so that his voice cannot be heard outside the confessional. Other facilities, none of which are shown, may also be provided in the priests inclosure maintaining fresh air, listening devices for priests with hearing problems, etc may be provided.

On either side of the priests inclosure 10 is an inclosure for a penitent, the one to the left of the priests inclosure 10 being designated generally by the one to the right of Located within a wall 22 which is placed between the priests inclosure 111 and the penitents inclosure 15 is a shutter device, generally designated by the numeral 25 in FIG. 1. A similar shutter device, generally designated by the numeral 26, is provided within a wall 27 between the priests inclsure and the penitents inclosure 16. Since the shutter devices 25 and 26 are identical, except for the fact that they are mirror images, only the shutter 25 will be described in the general function of the shutter devices 25 and 26 is to provide openings between the priests inclosure 1t) and the penitents inclosures and 16, and to provide means for closing such openings.

The need for shutter devices can be seen from the manner in which confessions are heard with the confessional of the type shown in FIG. 1. The priest is seated within the inclosure 10 and the door 12 is closed. Two lines of penitents are formed near, but a short distance from, the inclosures 15 and 16. Some sort of suitable light-indicating arrangement is provided to inform the penitents of whether or not anyone is within the inclosures 15 and 16. For example, above the inclosure 15 is a signaling device 30, and above the inclosure 16 is a similar signaling device 31. Each of these devices may include two lamps, one colored green and the other red. When, for example, no one is within the inclosure 16, the green lamp of the signaling device 31 will be lit to inform waiting penitents that the inclosure 16 is empty. Then, when a penitent pulls back the drapery 20 and enters the inclosure 16, he kneels on the kneeling bench 21. This action causes a switching device (not shown) associated with the kneeling bench 21 to be actuated to turn off the green lamp and to energize the red lamp, thereby indicating to others outside the confessional that a penitent is within the inclosure 16. The signaling device 30 associated with inclosure 15 operates in a similar manner.

After the priest is located within the inclosure 10, penitents enter both of the inclosures 15 and 16. Then, in a manner to be described more fully hereinbelow, the priest opens one of the shutter mechanisms between his inclosure and one of the penitents inclosures 15 and 16. For example, he may open the shutter mechanism 25 and proceed to hear the confession of the penitent within the inclosure 15. In this case, he will keep the shutter mechanism 26 closed so that the penitent within the inclosure 16 will not be able to hear the confession of the penitent within the inclosure 15. When the confession of the penitent in the inclosure 15 has been completed, the penitent leaves the confessional, the green light of the signaling device 30 again comes on, and a subsequent penitent enters the inclosure 15, kneels on a kneeling bench similar to that shown at 211 in the inclosure 16, and the red light of the signaling device 30 again is energized.

Meanwhile, however, the priest has closed the shutter mechanism 25 and opened the shutter mechanism 26 so that he can hear the confession of the penitent within the inclosure 16. Again, when this second confession has been completed, the penitent within the inclosure 16 leaves, and another penitent enters the inclosure 16 while the priest is hearing the confession of the penitent within the inclosure 15. Thus, the priest, when hearing confessions, is constantly shifting to the left and right to hear the confessions of penitents within the inclosures adjacent to the inclosure in which he is located. In some cases, this must be done for many hours, and can be an extremely exhausting ordeal.

In the past, shutter devices between the priests inclosure and the penitents inclosures have been simply horizontally-movable doors made of some suitable soundproofing material. For example, if the opening between the priests inclosure and a penitents inclosure is 1 /2 or 2 feet wide, a door which is arranged in a sliding manner must be moved the full width of 1 /2 or 2 feet in order to detail herein below. At any rate,

completely cover and uncover the opening between the inclosures. This relatively long movement which the priest must make in order to cover and uncover the openings between his inclosure and that of the penitents further increases the trying ordeal of hearing confessions. It is obvious that when these actions must be performed many times for many hours, they become extremely tiresome. Therefore, the primary purpose of the present invention is to alleviate this trying situation by providing shutter mechanisms 25 and 26 that are extremely simple to actuate so that the problem of covering and uncovering openings between the inclosures will not be tiring to the priest. As mentioned hereinabove, the shutter mechanisms 25 and 26 are similar, except that they are mirror images, and the shutter mechanism 25 only will be described in detail.

Referring still to FIG. 1, the shutter mechanism 25 appears from the priests inclosure 10 to be a plate 32 with a series of apertures 3535 therethrough and a handle 36 secured thereto. Also, a frame 37 surrounds the apertured plate 32. Reference is now made to FIGS. 2 and 3. It will be noted that FIG. 2 shows basically the details of the plate 32 with most of the wall 22 removed for reasons of clarity; also, the inner edges of the frame 37 are shown in FIG. 2 in phantom lines to show their relationship to the plate 32. At any rate, in FIGS. 2 and 3, it will be seen that the plate 32 is secured movably to the wall 22 at a pivot point 40. Also, the wall 22 is hollow, and the plate 32 is mounted pivotally within the wall. Also mounted within the wall and secured fixedly on the side adjacent to the penitents inclosure 15 is a second plate 41 having a plurality of apertures 42-42 formed therethrough and a frame 45 therearound. Both plates 32 and 41 may be made of some material having suitable soundproofing qualities such as a soft wood, fiber board or other soundproof sheet materials.

Referring now to FIG. 2, it will be seen that the plate 32 is shown in two of the positions to which it may be moved by the handle 36. A first of these positions is shown in solid lines with the apertures 35-35 also shown in solid lines. When in this position, which will be referred to hereinafter as the left-hand position, the apertures 35-35 are designed to be matched perfectly with apertures 42-42 in the fixed plate 41. In other words, the apertures of both plates 32 and 41 are similar and coincide when the plate 32 is in its left-hand position. Also, when the pivoted plate 32 is in this position, there is almost a complete opening between the priests inclosure 10 and the penitents inclosure 15 so that the priest can hear the confession of the penitent in that inclosure. Then, when the penitent leaves the inclosure 15 and the priest wishes to seal off his inclosure with the inclosure 15, he moves the pivoted plate 32 to its right-hand position shown in FIG. 2 by moving the handle 36 to the right, as shown in FIG. 2.

When this is done, the apertures 35-35 in the pivoted plate 32 are moved to positions between the apertures 42-42 of the fixed plate 41, thereby sealing off the opening between the priests inclosure 10 and the inclosure 15. Since the amount of movement necessary is only slightly greater than the width of the largest of the apertures in the plates 32 and 41, the amount of movement to cover and to uncover the opening between the inclosures 10 and.

15 is extremely small. For example, with a pivoted plate 32 approximately 3 feet long, the amount of movement of the handle 36 to completely open and close the shutter mechanism 25 may be only 1 /2 inches, and this small amount of movement can be made by a slight movement of the priests hand. Of course, other factors determine this amount of movement precisely such as the size of the apertures 35-35 and 4242. These apertures may be of varying size with the smaller apertures near the top of the plates 32 and 41 and the larger apertures near the bottoms thereof.

While the apertures in the drawing are of only three sizes for illustrative purposes, apertures of ing size may be more practical in view of pivoting action of the plate 32 is taking place, and the upper portion of the plate will not move as great a distance as the lower portion. Also, the apertures 3535 may be formed at intersections of radii projecting from the pivot point 40 and arcs of circles that are formed using the pivot point 40 as the center. At any rate, smaller apertures may be formed in the top row on the plates 32 and 41, and larger apertures may be formed along the bottom row. Those between the top and bottom rows of apertures would be between these two sizes and increasingly larger from top to bottom. The only restriction would be that all of the apertures in the pivoted plate 32 must be completely mismatched with the apertures in the fixed plate 42 when the pivoted plate 32 is moved to its right-hand position. Therefore, the diameters of the apertures along any are must be smaller than the spaces between the apertures so that this complete mismatch can be accomplished.

It will be manifest that this invention is not limited to the specific details described in connection with the above embodiment of the invention, but that various modifications may be made without departing from the spirit and scope thereof. For example, stop members 46 and 47 (FIG. 2) may be provided to limit the movement of the pivoted plate 32 between its two extreme positions. Associated with these stop members may be switching mechanisms which cause lamps to be energized to inform the priest of whether or not the shutter mechanisms 25 and 26 are opened or closed. This may be necessary because the interior of the inclosures 10, and 16 are generally quite dark and the position of the shutters and 26 may not be obvious. Also, screening material (not shown) may be positioned between the frame 37 and the plate 32 and between the frame 45 and the plate 41. In this way, the apertures in the plates 32 and 41 will not be exposed.

What is claimed is:

A shutter mechanism for confessionals of the type having a first inclosure for a confessor and a second inclosure for a penitent, which comprises a partition positioned begradually-varythe fact that a tween the two inclosures and having an opening formed therethrough so that communication can be had between the confessor and the penitent, a first plate-like member secured fixedly to the partition and having a plurality of apertures formed therethrough, a second plate-like member having a plurality of apertures formed therethrough which are similar to the apertures in the first plate-like member, means for securing the second plate-like member to the partition pivotally and such that the second platelike member is adjacent to the first plate-like member and the pivot point is above the opening in the partition, the

apertures in the two plate-like members being formed at' the intersections of radii projecting from the pivot point and arcs of circles made with the pivot point at their centers and any such apertures along an are being smaller in width than the spaces between adjacent apertures, and means secured to the pivoted plate-like member for moving that member between a first positon wherein the apertures of the two plate-like members are in alignment and a second position where they are misaligned.

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,238,689 8/1917 Knissel et al. 1,612,184 12/ 1926 Frisbey. 1,782,559 11/1930 Wood Side. 2,294,912 9/ 1942 Jurcak.

References Cited by the Applicant UNITED STATES PATENTS 242,059 5/1881 Scott.

992,055 5/ 1911 Pomerantz. 1,213,947 1/1917 Prussner. 1,929,595 10/ 1933 Macleod. 2,923,037 2/ 1960 Muhr. 2,93 6,498 5/1960 Scott.

HARRISON R. MOSELEY, Primary Examiner. P. C. KANNAN, Assistant Examiner. 

